Need help with computer freezing and no internet connectivity

Hi, I have a system I built about 6 months ago and just recently decided to diagnose the issues with it. It's a Core 2 Quad Q8300 on a MSI P6NGM-L MS-7366 VER 1 LGA775 Intel Desktop Motherboard, BIOS version V3.2 1/30/208. Old laptop harddrive that I've had no problems with, 3GB of RAM, and a 8500GT.

The operating system that I am currently running on the system is actually (and I know how wrong this is) running a Windows 7 64-bit factory image from an old Alienware PC, version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601. It was Windows installation media, and I decided to use it after many failed efforts. It is not genuine or anything.

The problems that I have with it is random freezing (for about 1 second, every couple of seconds), the system not being able to connect to the internet (on ethernet, it says it is connected on startup but has no ipv4 or ipv6 connection, then when I try to use internet explorer, it cannot show the webpage, just doesn't load. Sometimes it loads a page halfway and then stops loading, and then gives me the "limited connection" icon.), and I am not able to install any operating system with a USB drive (it gives me the initial windows logo on boot when installing new media and either stays on that screen or keeps restarting. I've tried this with both windows 8.1 and 10, and was only able to get win7 on there because of the disk, or maybe win7 is the farthest it will support, I dont know.).

I've tried everything I know, including updating the nforce driver, trying to update bios (but was not able to do that), trying on different networks, different booting, etc, but nothing seems to work. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Seems like it might be best to rule out networking issues first. The freeing is strange though, could just be windows pretending to be a clown car, where the internet provides the clowns.

So your system is connected to a router or something via lan cable?
Can you plug something else in to make sure the router is connecting fine?

With your computer connected, can you ping or tracert www.google.com?
Open a cmd prompt and type in ping www.google.com or tracert www.google.com.
Also try typing ipconfig /all to see what the network settings are. Make sure your IP address makes sense, i.e. is not 169.254.x.x. It should probably start with 10 or 192 if you are connected to a router.

It's connected with an Ethernet cable hooked up to our apartment's router/modem. I've had no problems with the cable on other desktops and laptops, just issues with this PC, and at different locations as well.

Pinging resulted in not being able to find the host. I've also tried disabling the RSS and re-enabling it, restarting my network adapter, and installing a new driver for the nforce adapter. This action of installing the new drivers, I believe, is now making the system freeze on me. It could be the harddrive, but I never had any issues with it until now.

Tried using a fixed DNS like 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4?

Yeah the drivers could be killing it.

What happened when you ran the ipconfig /all command? Did you get anything that made sense, comapred to other computers?
I.e. IP address similar, gateway the same etc?

You can test if it is just a DNS problem by pinging 8.8.8.8 as well :)

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Yeah tried that was well, didn't seem to fix anything :/

ipconfig turned out fine, essentially matched the laptop I'm using right now.

When pinging 8.8.8.8, request timed out 3 times, then reply from my ip "destination host unreachable"

Well safe to assume it is a networking issue within your computer. Try rolling back the driver, or restoring to an earlier restore point.

I tried both. Still getting the freezing, still getting the no connection. Is there any proposals you have on installing a new operating system onto the pc? or any reason why the usb drive freezes when i try to install windows?

Yeah, that is the headscratcher for me.
Can you run a USB linux without the HDD connected?

Hardware issues?
Are you booting from USB and it is freezing during installation?

Could be almost any part of the hardware.
Start ruling stuff out. Try the portable version of crystal disk info (portable has no installation so no nagware) and check the smart parameters on your HDD. If the bad sector count is high, or increasing, HDD could be on the way out.
Try memtest86 and do a good scan of your ram to check it out.
Reset the bios settings to default, incase they are borked..

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I'm going to try that, if I'm able to run linux on the system I should be ok

well I try using the win8.1/10 installer, and right when it hits the windows logo it freezes. No menus, nothing. I can't even get to the part of choosing my drives or anything like that.

One more idea: how old is your PSU? And what is it?

Old OEM that came out of an HP machine, probably at least 6 years old. But I've never had a problem with it.

You never do, until you do!

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Well, after trying to install Ubuntu and different Windows versions, the computer still doesn't connect to the internet. I cannot get it working, however I was able to get it to boot from a USB when installing some Linux versions, but others, like SteamOS, were unable to install because the motherboard doesn't support UEFI Legacy booting (or at least thats what I figure the problem is). If you guys seem to have a fix for the connectivity issue I think I will be all set.

So no freezing anymore?

Nope, not here on Ubuntu. Seems to run flawlessly, apart from the internet issue.

Ubuntu running from the HDD or directly from the stick?